


The Breath of a Lion Roars Within (Snake Dens and Lion Fangs SasuHina ‘Verse)

by WishMoon (A_Wish_On_the_Moon)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst and Feels, Bad end, Because Character Arc, Cycle of hate, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, F/M, Gen, Hinata Joins Orochimaru, Hyuuga Branch Family Implications, Implied Sibcest, Lots Of Flowery Language, M/M, Miscommunication, Platonic-Romantic Relationships, Poor Hanabi, Poor Life Choices, Psychological Drama, Sasuhina Zine 2020, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Rivalry, Technically Alternate Reality, Uchiha-Hyuuga Parallels, and sasuke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:47:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28388019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Wish_On_the_Moon/pseuds/WishMoon
Summary: In a twist of fate, history repeats, and a sibling betrays flesh and blood for the sake of a better alternative. Hanabi rises, Hinata overcomes, and Uchiha Sasuke gains a new partner under the Snake Sannin’s tutelage. Though the reason for her defection may not be as righteous as Sasuke’s own, Hinata loves her sister, for all that she is weak, and she will not see her caged.
Relationships: Aburame Shino & Hyuuga Hinata & Inuzuka Kiba, Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura & Uzumaki Naruto, Hyuuga Hanabi & Hyuuga Hiashi & Hyuuga Hinata, Hyuuga Hanabi & Hyuuga Hinata, Hyuuga Hanabi/Hyuuga Hinata, Hyuuga Hinata & Manda, Hyuuga Hinata & Orochimaru, Hyuuga Hinata & Uchiha Sasuke, Hyuuga Hinata & Yuuhi Kurenai, Hyuuga Hinata/Uchiha Sasuke, Uchiha Itachi & Uchiha Sasuke
Kudos: 38





	The Breath of a Lion Roars Within (Snake Dens and Lion Fangs SasuHina ‘Verse)

⭑⁕⭑

_ (It begins, she remembers, with heartache.) _

⭑⁕⭑

Like most tragedies, the reason she falls is not because of anger, nor because of pain. Instead, it is for love, and sacrifice, and the heart that she never learned to suffocate, both for her father’s sake, nor her clan’s.

To be shinobi is to swallow back one’s insecurities, and to never give up, no matter what takes place. To be shinobi is to be strong, and confident, and cruel. It is not a way of life that she could ever belong to. She’s known that for years now, but, still, she trembles at the seams between her clan and her self, and has always found who she is wanting.

Quiet, and careful, and afraid; these are the things that define her. She is soft, shy — unable to connect with those who do not reach out their sunlit hands first, offering the silken threads of bonds she does not know. It is a miserable, melancholy existence, but her cellmates have made it bearable, easy, to fade into the background, where pockets of sunlight and the cool, dappled shadows soak her in warmth.

Perhaps it is precisely because she thrives in cocoons of safety and security that the winds shifted as they did, and trickled darkness and disease into her home in such a way that Hyuuga Hinata, heiress to a clan trapped in tradition and tribulations, is forced to break free of her shell, and evolve.

⭑⁕⭑

( _ Weakness without a cause means nothing, in the end _ , he tells her; with a noose wrapped around her neck and poison in her breast, she can believe it.)

⭑⁕⭑

“Hmph.”

The boy before her is almost as quiet as she is, but. His eyes are like open doors, muted rage buried in the depths of a cloud of despair. They shift between the glassy emptiness of endless lakes at midnight and the frost-bitten flames that crackle at the back of his throat, anger writ into the lines of his face and the lightning of slaughter burning the blood in his veins.

His is a silence that speaks louder than words, sharp and piercing and impossible to bury; hers, nothing more than the medicinal roots that get crushed by the heavier feet of men far stronger than she believes she could ever be.

She ducks her head under the weight of his stare, fingers clenching and unclenching in the folds of her coat, but he is kind enough to return to his katas, and... it is enough.

(Uchiha Sasuke knows her by the ghost of her eyes, but he does not  _ know  _ her. Just as she does not know  _ him _ .)

⭑⁕⭑

((She never came here for  _ him _ , anyhow.))

⭑⁕⭑

Hyuuga Neji is everything her father wishes she could be, and everything that Hyuuga Hinata is not.

He is grace, and duty, and power, trapped beneath a destiny he cannot control and a fate he believes others must face, should they believe themselves capable of change. He is anger trapped beneath the shackles of their clan, and pain buried under a truth he continues to assert, no matter that she  _ knows  _ — even if, in the end, she never truly  _ understood _ .

Hyuuga Neji is hard work, and responsibility, and the kind of person that she wants to admire. Wants, but cannot, for he dismantles her stance and tears apart at her will with harsh blows and harsher words, and places upon her the burdens of a clan that she has never been able to carry.

Unlucky, that she was born the weak heiress, whose heart is greater than her ability, and whose constitution ruins all that she could have accomplished. 

Unlucky, that he believes himself little more than the branches designed to protect her, and cages them both within. 

Unlucky, that her clan deems him as expendable, and wishes  _ she  _ had been, instead.

⭑⁕⭑

(Lucky, that there is a demon sun that burns, bright and brilliant and strong, and incinerates pride and tradition with a truth and sincerity and love that cannot be faked, nor crushed, no matter what comes his way.)

⭑⁕⭑

“Ku-ku-ku,” chortles the inky blackness that oozes from stone walls and spiritual prisons, beneath grunts and moans and screams that make her shudder as they echo inside the drums of her ears, the bones of her ribs, the beat of her heart. 

Snake eyes gleam gold as they swallow her being whole, but her feet are grounded, and her chakra is still, and there is nothing for her to fear but for the makings of her own mind’s horrors.

Genjutsu, she realizes, between one blink and the next. As terrifying and as real as the fingernails digging crescents into her palms, and as heavy as the burdens and expectations that she’d run away from, so many moons ago. 

_ (So, choke back everything, and breathe.) _

“How interesting,” he hums, “That not only the Sharingan comes into my possession, but…”

Orochimaru glides closer, fingers twining with her dark, dark bangs, satisfied and curious, as she trembles, still.

“… The Byakugan, too.”

⭑⁕⭑

( _ But freedom within a cage is just as terrifying _ , she answers back; the fingers wrapped around his blade twitch, but he does not reply, and she knows that he understands.)

⭑⁕⭑

Hyuuga Hanabi is a wild, raucous, stubborn child, and she is Hinata’s in a way that Hyuuga Hinata, weak and shy and faded, could never assert.

For all that Hanabi becomes the waves crashing onto shore, the rocks burying others beneath the shards of her strength, her  _ glory _ , Hinata is the calm within the storm, the pillar that carries dead stares and deader hearts, and feeds the lions who roam these hallowed grounds.

But, Hanabi is hungry, and desperate, and the more Hinata withers, the more Hanabi blooms.

She is the weighty gaze in the quiet between frustration and disappointment, the bitter sturdiness between tear-streaked nights and sorrowful mornings. The dewdrops in a summer rain, chilling and lovely and relieving, in a way only trusted confidantes could ever be.

(The  _ world _ , in between the roaring of beasts and the breaking bones of a bird’s brittle wings, as time crawls ever forwards, unwilling to wait for Hinata to keep up.)

She is the proud guardian of an heiress that does not deserve it, and the wilful rival of a sister who would sooner swap their fates than allow clan politics to divide them further.

⭑⁕⭑

(Hanabi is everything that her father could want, and everything that Hinata would give anything to keep.)

⭑⁕⭑

“Here,” the boy mutters, as he hands her a warm drink after a particularly lengthy spar.

She blinks back surprise, rubbing away salty sweat and perspiration with the sleeves of her soaked shirt. Her hands reach out to grip the clay mug tightly, careful of the heat. “Ah, arigatou, Uchiha-san.”

He nods in acknowledgement, but says little else. Instead, he seats himself several meters away, unraveling a pouch from within his sash filled with dried herbs and toxins.

She waits, calmer in his presence now than she had been when she’d first arrived, as he crushes them with a mortar and pestle. Cups her hands for the sleeve of death and dreams he gives her, and doesn’t wait for him to slip his own into his tea before she’s already slipped it into hers, and stirred it until the powder has dissolved.

“Let’s hope your immunity can withstand it, Hyuuga,” he grumbles, clinking his cup with hers, before both he and she are downing it all in one go.

⭑⁕⭑

( _ I love you _ , she never gets to tell her. Maybe, that is for the best.)

⭑⁕⭑

With sharp kunai and sharper hands, Hanabi deftly weaves her fingers through the strands of her sister’s hair — rips, at first, then yanks, and tears. Jagged edges fall onto the soft tatami mat floor, and scratch scattered noise into cricket-song silence.

“You know,” Hanabi grumbles, offhand, as she attempts to smooth out Hinata’s bangs over the space above her brow, and layer out the scruff left behind, “Keeping it this short’s just asking for trouble.” 

(It is all too easy to picture the green strokes of ink that have sealed so many more before her elder sister; she hates that it may very well take  _ her _ , too.)

Hinata flinches away from the words Hanabi casts, like stones into a well poisoned by the skies that fill it steep, and curls into herself, smaller and smaller, still, until there is nothing of her back but a spine that bends, and bends, and bends, begging to be broken. Hanabi scoffs; and, yet, there is solace in the far-off distance of her gaze, sanctuary in the steady dance of her hands in the darkness.

Hyuuga Hinata does not let crumbling words tumble from chapped summer lips, but her quiet is answer, enough. There are needles that dig into her scalp, threading through tangles and knots, and whispers carried on the wind that say what she already knows: “Hiding from the truth doesn’t make it go away.”

“... Mm.”

Hinata bows under the weight of a legacy engraved in stone, weakness in the length of her honor and strength in the muted dip of her shoulders, but… that is not who Hanabi  _ is _ . She is sturdiness in the face of adversity, truth in the corridors of darkness — a force of nature, in rooms where stepping foot outside risks digging one’s own gravestone.

There’s firelight in the ghosts of her sister’s eyes: a will of flame that burns bright and strong, beneath mothwing lashes, and carries with it ambition Hinata can only dream of.

“I refuse to be caged,” Hanabi mouths, clearer, near the shell of her ear, eyes narrowed in anger. Hinata sees, as her fingers clench in her lap and Hanabi’s own dig into the heiress’s shoulders, the words she spits reflected. 

In the stillness of water that drips off bamboo shoots and splashes into a moonlit void, a pond ripples outwards, ever-expanding. “And,” she hears, above the roaring storm of her mind, “So should you.” 

⭑⁕⭑

( _ Stay _ , Hanabi begs, with moon-white eyes,  _ For my sake. _ )

⭑⁕⭑

Against stalwart hearts forged from blood-branch lines, and blades that flash like silver in the dark light of the stars, destiny is but a forlorn, ephemeral concept, and change rides — on winds of water, and wings of flame: the humble mourning of childhoods lost, perhaps, and futures slain.

They are not their pasts, but Clan defines them in a way that it does not others — stifles breath and shackles wrists, and casts long shadows that leave them aching. There is love, and death, and war, entrenched in their blood, and, for him, it has become as natural as breathing. 

For Hyuuga Hinata, however, she has not learned the art — of slaying, this kindness in her soul.

(But, she suspects, perhaps neither has the boy before her — who, for all intents and purposes, gave up  _ everything _ to avenge that which has already been lost.)

Uchiha Sasuke, she finds, wades beneath a loneliness she’d thought she’d left behind, as her family grew and bonds tangled together on threads of silk and faith. Black crow’s feathers haunt his yesterdays the way cricket-song cloaks her own, and leave him gasping, afraid, as he reaches out for the ghosts of his past and, instead, finds her own alien eyes aglow in the pale, filtered light of shadows cast underground.

But where sleep is a hell he knows well, Hyuuga Hinata finds the opposite to be true. She struggles with insecurities in the waking world, as her speech stutters through muted words and casts nothing into the clawing screeches of Otogakure, and the length of her hair falls below her shoulders and brings, with it, the  _ proof  _ of her growth. 

The snake’s apprentice is a title that does not suit her, Sasuke complains, as his fingers wrap around loose strands and  _ yank _ her back into the spar; Hyuuga Hinata, no longer heiress to a clan that would have her cage her own blood in a manner far worse than death, jabs chakra into a particularly sensitive pressure point in his arm, watches him wince as he lets her go, and — can’t say she disagrees.

⭑⁕⭑

( _ Too merciful _ , the serpents wrapped around her bed hiss, but all Hinata sees are weeping aches and jagged scars; quietly, she kneads thick ointment and burn cream between shedding scales, and listens to them speak of the sorts of legends only spirits can know.)

⭑⁕⭑

Hyuuga Hinata is used to being sheltered from the world’s violent storms. Where her clan taught her the struggle of their Gentle Fist and hid from her the secrets of tradition, her teachers shielded her from the realities of what it means to be shinobi — pushed her, to bond with those who, she finds, could so very easily fall in the line of duty. 

It frightens her to her core, and leaves her anxious and reeling, on the rare occasions Neji-nii’s truths rung loud and clear in the heat of battle, amongst reconnaissance missions or retrieval assignments where too little information and too risky parameters led to everything falling apart.

If Aburame Shino was a calm sky at noon, she thinks, later, as she watches him breathe deeply beneath linen sheets, then Inuzuka Kiba was like a lesser sun, beaming bright and strong as he radiated a warmth so blinding, Hinata would be hard-pressed to look away. Without them, it is impossible to bask in the bonds of friendship that made her so much more than she could have ever believed, and she does not think she could survive losing them.

Kurenai-sensei stands vigil by their bedsides with an arm around her shoulders, soft and firm and as sturdy and strong as the trees growing outside the Village Gates — a kind, beautiful pillar of strength, Hyuuga Hinata thinks, and the reason why it is harder, to be afraid of the world, just as much as it is harder, still, to stand on her own two feet, when she will always be there to shield her from its horrors.

⭑⁕⭑

(With her fellow genin in recovery and the broken expressions on Uzumaki Naruto and Haruno Sakura’s faces stark in her mind, Hyuuga Hinata, guiltily, begins to hate the boy she’d never truly seen, until it was too late.)

⭑⁕⭑

Uchiha Sasuke is like dragon’s breath, she thinks, or the silence before a storm. He is cool collection in the presence of fear, calm analysis in the feeling of danger — a facade of calm, when he isn’t being particularly annoyed by their mentor’s cryptic evasiveness, but. She’s learning to read the twitch of his lips and the quirk of his brow, the way the bandages that hold his feelings together have seams her fingers manage to slip through, and, Hinata thinks, this man is far more expressive than he’d let others believe.

(The world cannot bury who one is, at their core, no matter how much she might have wished it.)

Amongst a mission abroad, where a full moon burns bright and shines through acrid smoke and the cool, crisp breeze of autumn winds and falling leaves, Hyuuga Hinata splits an onigiri and rations pack to share, and lets Sasuke stoke the flames of a campfire, where she can see dragons flickering amidst winged hunters and roaring beasts. 

They eat in silence. After, as Hinata tightens the straps of her gear and adjust the leather plates on her arm, and Sasuke gazes into the abyss, arms loose atop his thighs and eyes caught by the glowing orb so akin to her own clan doujutsu, he shares what’s had him troubled for so long.

“Once,” he states, “The Hyuuga and the Uchiha were a single clan.”

“O-Oh?”

He nods, complacent, and admits, “It’s said that time was what separated us, but...”

He lets the thought trail off. Hinata fidgets, confused, but leaves it be. 

(He doesn’t have a real answer for why the clan doujutsu split; perhaps, she doesn’t, either.)

“... Maybe i-it wasn’t time,” Hyuuga Hinata responds, days later, with blood on her hands and the mission complete but, gratefully, no deaths staining the caverns of their hearts and their minds.

“Hm?” Sasuke asks, resting against the wall of their latest hideout. He is wary with a paranoia borne from days spent restless and on the run, and Hinata is no different.

“The, um, the separation,” she clarifies, coming up to where he’s sat, exhausted, yet straining not to show any sign of weakness — regardless that she’s already seen him at his worst, and that she has no reason to hurt him — not now, perhaps not ever. Regardless, expectations are hard to train away; she should know. 

“... Maybe it wasn’t time, but... fear.”

He quirks up an eyebrow, curious, and even opens an eye to judge her further. “Fear of  _ what _ , Hyuuga?”

She collapses next to him, her arms straining to hold her up. The shadows crawl closer, and a few snakes and summons find their way to curl around them both. She lets them siphon from her chakra and share their own, while Sasuke holds a more token protest of glaring at the small creatures, before letting them do so anyway, and explains, “Well, l-love, of course.”

“... Tch.” He scoffs at the answer, as she expected him to, and she brings up her legs to hug them close. Lays her weary head upon them, and lets the absence of sound soothe her bruised muscles. 

Quieter, however, she hears the hollow hurt in the gaps of his voice, as he points out, not painstakingly, “Love is for those too  _ weak  _ to know what pity is.”

Her head lists to the side, uncertain. She does not know the whole story, but, from what bits and pieces Uchiha Sasuke has given her, she knows that the Uchiha Massacre was an unspeakable tragedy, with far more hurt and heartache than he lets on. 

The burden of a legacy is great; this, both of them know. But, Hyuuga Hinata has lived amongst endless dark corridors and crumbling stone walls, and seen the worst of tradition buried in cages and bloodshed, over the years. Yet, she does not —  _ can  _ not — understand death upon a whim. 

However, what she  _ does  _ know is this: how far a sibling will go for the sake of their own — how far a  _ sister  _ will go to protect the other half of her flesh and soul. 

How far a son has gone for the sake of his father, she remembers, or a mere  _ usuratonkachi  _ for the sake of his most strongest rival and precious friend — bonds that, Sasuke implies, he couldn’t even begin to burn, for how strong they have withstood time, and distance, and betrayal.

Love is a powerful thing, and it can divide as surely as it can bring people together. It is the only answer, she thinks, that could make sense, where family is concerned, and blood is shared, and legacies lace into one another, end over end, and branch into tomorrow.

(No matter her circumstances, she has never stopped loving Hanabi; she does not believe that his brother can be any different, no matter how horrific or evil his deeds.)

With unspoken words and incomplete thoughts, she breathes out softly and leans back into Manda’s thick hide. Torchlight flickers before them, mesmerizing in the shapes and memories that form anew, and helps her stabilize her courage.

Hyuuga Hinata’s hand slowly settles above Sasuke’s own. She slips her fingers between the gaps of his, and relaxes — into the shared comfort, when he allows them to intertwine.

⭑⁕⭑

(With fire in his heart and ice in her veins, Uchiha Sasuke and Hyuuga Hinata learn to dance amongst chakra and steel, and calm the oceans in their nightmares with an understanding that this, past and present and future, will not be the end.)

⭑⁕⭑

Like litmus fogs that paint effervescent sunsets on dim, dark horizons, Hanabi blossoms, and hardens, and rises. She is fierceness forged into fury, and fury split, thrice-fold, into mountains that erode and footsteps that sink, deep, where another once walked, but could not run. 

For all that the rest may think, sibilant voices and vile bargains had never meant as much as sad, sad eyes and bitter smiles do. But, Hinata realizes, Hyuuga Hanabi is not pain made into steel, nor desires held together by rope and twine. 

(Or, she should not have been.)

“ _ Where is she?! _ ” an heiress screams, danger in the crack of her voice and sorrow feeding the fire in her chest. Frustration furrows her brow, springing teardrops from phantom eyes and phantom limbs, but Hanabi is all caustic words and vicious bites, and the ambition of a survivor burning from both ends. Nothing like Hinata had expected and, yet, everything, and  _ more _ . 

Nimble strength slices through air, itself, in the lunge of her jaws and the knife of her kicks, but a tree’s roots are only as sturdy as the drive of its promise — the kind that both heiresses have long since broken too many of to uphold any longer.

Hanabi, with a vicious desperation to protect and to save, bears the crest of a clan that has cut away her branches and left her buckling, sinking, into the very earth she’s stood above. Against the experience of a hundred lifetimes, it may not be enough.

But, as wicked laughter drowns out the world, all Hyuuga Hinata can hear are quiet demands on moonlit nights, and all she can feel are rough calluses on bandaged palms, as warmth consumes her from within.

" _ Nee _ -san!" Hanabi shouts, and Hinata, quiet and quivering, stands tall and proud as her sister's will spills into palms of spirit-fire and grief, and —  _ falters _ , before the might of a bleeding cub bearing a lion’s roar. 

Breathes, because isn't this what she had wanted, all those moons past?

( _ Wails _ , because power wrought from pain should never burn an heiress's soul, and — Hyuuga Hinata, for all that she has tried, could never be half the leader Hanabi has become.)

⭑⁕⭑

(She left behind her family’s fangs for a den of snakes, and it is the only reason, she knows, why Hanabi will be fine.)

.

.

⭑⁕⭑


End file.
